Bear Mountain Bull

It’s time again for a little BMB R&R, especially with the market behaving as bizarrely as it’s been. Maybe if we stop watching it start to behave a little better…

Posting will be very light and variable over the course of this week, but we’ll put up an open thread each market day for our readers to comment on the day’s market activity or to post any interesting links they might run across.

Check the space below for whatever the latest might be during this ‘off’ time, and please visit the various sites in the ‘Links’ and ‘Regular Stops’ for up-to-date market news and analysis.

BMB will be back in full swing by next weekend.

Today’s action got pretty ugly, and sent the Nasdaq tumbling from the top of its recent range right back down to the bottom. Judging from the activity in the after-market today, this range could easily be penetrated to the downside tomorrow. Keep an eye on your holdings, decide where your pain threshold is, and protect yourself.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Earnings reports come fast and furious these days - EBay, Qualcomm among the companies reporting tonight.

Update: Here’s the wrap on the earnings and after-market action.

Even some reasonably good economic data announced this morning couldn’t get the market started today, and another late-day selloff sent the markets down again today. The Dow fell 89 points (-0.8%) to 10540, the S&P 500 dropped 11 points (-1.0%) to 1185 and the Nasdaq lost 32 points (-1.5%) to finish at 2074. The Russell 2000 fared nor better, dropping 7 points (-1.1%) to 618, and the 10-year Treasury yield finished at 4.18%.

Market internals fell clearly on the negative side today, with advances/declines at 4 to 7 on the NYSE and 3 to 7 on the Nasdaq, and up/down volume running 1 to 3 on the NYSE and 1 to 4 on the Nasdaq. There were 230 new highs to 38 new lows.

No groups made significant gains on the day. The losers were led by networking stocks (-3.6%), airlines (-3.2%), disk drives (-2.3%), paper stocks (-2.3%), semiconductors (-2.1%), internets (-2.1%), computer hardware (-2.1%) and broker/dealers (-1.9%).

Crude oil prices dropped nearly a dollar to $47.55/barrel, the dollar gained slightly against other major currencies and gold prices gained early in the day but fell back to near $422/ounce.

Bernie Schaeffer takes a look at whether the so-called “quality” stocks - i.e., large-cap Dow & S&P 500 companies - are really a better investment than the small-cap arena, which has been outperforming the large-caps for quite a while now.

A good deal of economic data out this morning: housing starts up, initial jobless claims down. The Consumer Price Index headline number dipped slightly. Excluding food and energy, the number was up 0.2%.